


Something Gentle

by IrisCandy



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Its angsty but then its cutesie, Pain, Scott and Stiles bromance, Stiles and Lydia budding romance, Worried Lydia Martin, i don't know what this is, pre-werewolf Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 14:50:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1432471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrisCandy/pseuds/IrisCandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even if Stiles hadn't said anything at all, they both knew that there was something wrong. Stiles had reacted to the bite immediately, like a fast acting poison had been injected in his veins. </p>
<p>(Or, Scott decides to go forth with changing Stiles' body, giving him the bite in order to expel the Nogitsune. This doesn't go well.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Gentle

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is. It's fluffy. It hurts a little. It's a product of me channeling my fears of Stiles ever becoming a werewolf into writing, and perhaps dealing with these fears a little.  
> And maybe I just have a thing for writing characters in dire but hopeful situations. 
> 
> Musical accompaniment as I wrote this fic included Chamakay by Blood Orange, as well as The Cold by Exitmusic.

He was on that same sofa. A few hours ago, he was paralyzed, mouth sealed over with black tape, a playful glint to his eye.

Lydia couldn't decide right then if she preferred him as he had been then, an evil spirit drenching his soul in black trickery, or if she preferred him now, as he lay staring at the ceiling with a coat of sweat on his face and deep bite marks on his tensed bicep.

"Scott," Stiles finally called out, his voice a barren and groggy sound.

Scott had been sitting on a wooden dining chair right next to Stiles' head. Lydia paced around the living room, watching the waning of Stiles' skin and trying to ignore the sound of Scott biting his thumb down to the nail bed, his foot tapping on the hardwood. Lydia couldn't help but think how human he looked right then, a fidgeting mass of frayed nerves on an old kitchen chair, and it almost made it hard to remember that it was _his_ teeth that had sunk into Stiles' skin mere hours ago.  

At the sound of Stiles' voice, the two of them turned their eyes in his direction, but he hadn't moved an inch. He simply stared at the ceiling, visibly trying to keep his bottom lip from trembling.

"Yeah, man, I'm here," Scott said immediately, scooting to the edge of the chair.

Stiles mouth twitched up into what Lydia assumed was supposed to be a smile. "Don't know how you go through this all the time, buddy."  

Despite their playful tone, the words sounded laborious coming from his mouth.

Scott's brow furrowed. "Stiles, it wasn't that bad. It was just kind of like a really bad stomach ache the first time."

Stiles, still staring up at the ceiling, gave a breath of a laugh and shook his head slightly. "Not...not how it feels f-for me."

Scott turned his wrinkled gaze toward Lydia, his eyes sunken with worry and his mouth open slightly in question. She returned the look with wide eyes, tensing her jaw, but giving no answer.

Even if Stiles hadn't said anything at all, they both knew that there was something wrong. Stiles had reacted to the bite immediately, like a fast acting poison had been injected in his veins. Now, he was getting grayer by the second, sweat beading up all over his pale skin.

Lydia watched as Scott swallowed with effort and turned back to Stiles, unclasping his hands to place one on his best friend's forehead.

"Dude, you're burning up," he said, his voice peaking up at the end with panic.

"That's what werewolves do, right? You know, like...like that dude from the Twilight movie," Stiles said with a weak grin. "Always...hot."

Lydia felt her lips curl into a small smile, before she found it was a little too hard to hold. A crease between her eyes took its place, and she wrapped her arms around her middle.

Stiles turned his head toward her just then, and she could see the tips of his hair beginning to shake as the trembling began. She became aware of how distant she was from him, standing feet away in the middle of the room.

Amazingly, even among the pain coursing through him, worry seemed to fill his eyes when he looked at her. "Hey, you okay?"

She only looked at him, her eyebrows peaking up slightly as she expertly tried to keep her emotions from her face.

She felt her feet moving toward him of their own accord until she was on her knees in front of him. She bowed her head, her hands moving up to rest on the sofa.

"Hey," he said again, weakly. She had no choice but to lift her chin and look him in the eye. "You don't have to worry about...about me, okay? Tr-trust the Alpha."

Scott gave a small laugh from his chair, shaking his head as one normally did upon hearing most of the things Stiles had to say. Lydia smiled too, trying to make it look like his reassurance made any difference at all as she watched him grow sicker before her eyes.

Just then, he hissed in pain, turning his eyes back up to the ceiling and squeezing them shut. His hand curled into a fist at his side, and Lydia instinctively laid hers over top of it and gripped tight. Heat radiated off of him like a furnace, a sharp contrast to the ice that had flown through his veins while the Nogitsune had occupied his body.

"Stiles - Stiles, how does it feel?" Scott asked urgently, abandoning his chair to kneel beside Lydia. He gripped Stiles' shoulder, keeping him grounded.

Stiles grimaced for a full minute, grinding his teeth together, before he forced out a response. "Fire- cold-cold-hurts-"

Lydia knew it shouldn't make sense what he was saying, but she could think only of the kind of freezing cold you rarely feel - so cold it feels scalding. Then she thought of hot water, hot enough to burn like dry ice.

Stiles took a shuddering breath, his voice becoming only slightly clearer. "It's coming- _it's coming from the bite_ -"

His voice cut off as he tensed and Lydia thought she could feel his fist closing tighter under her hand as he dug his nails into his palm.

"It shouldn't feel like that," Scott said quietly, shaking his head. "That's not what it feels like."

"Call Deaton," Lydia ordered simply, keeping her voice steady.

Scott bolted up without protest, tugging his phone out of his pocket while he went.

Stiles made a whimpering noise before his muscles relaxed and he released a relieved breath from his quivering lips.

"Stiles?" she asked quietly, moving her hand up his arm to close on his shoulder. "You okay?"

Eyes still shut tight, Stiles gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head just as a drop of sweat rolled down his temple.

"Okay," she said soothingly, rubbing strong and comforting circles on his shoulder, "Stiles, it's okay."

The words were absolute lies, almost impudent as Stiles lay on the couch in utter pain, but it was the least she could offer as she felt her own nervous sweat building on the back of her neck. She felt useless.

A tremble ran through Stiles then, and they didn't stop. His entire body shuddered as his head whipped to the side, the veins in his neck becoming prominent with the effort to outlast his own pain.

Lydia's breath hitched.

"Scott!" she called over her shoulder, her heart picking up pace.

The werewolf entered the room then, his jaw set and his eyes hard with determination.

"Deaton's coming," he said simply before kneeling in his same spot again and wrapping a large hand around Stiles' wrist. Lydia gazed down at it as black tendrils appeared on his skin, snaking their way up his arm.

But he only held on a mere three seconds before snatching his hand back like he'd been burnt.

"What?" Lydia asked, panicked. "What is it?"

Pain furrowed Scott's brow as he curled his hand into a fist. "I don't think I can take away pain from a bite I gave him."

Lydia's mouth fell open slightly as she turned her disquieted eyes back to the boy on the sofa, watching him shake and mumble nonsense in his feverish state.

If they couldn't take away even a fraction of his pain, then what good were they?

Lydia grabbed Stiles' clammy hand, bringing it up to her lips. She found herself whispering futilities.

"Shh," she said against his skin, closing her eyes and pretending, just for the moment, that she was a werewolf. Something gentle, in a way; something that didn't call upon death with a scream, something whose only purpose was to drain away the pain of others.

She imagined this until the screams started.

Stiles' hand gripped hers painfully, and her eyes flew open as he tried to keep a scream between his clenched teeth. He couldn't hold it. His eyes opened and Lydia could swear she saw them flash gold for the smallest millisecond before his back arched and a scream was ripped out of him, fully fledged pain bursting through him in one heart wrenching second.

It was at this time, when Lydia's breath was sucked out of her, that Deaton arrived, throwing open Scott's front door and rushing inside with Melissa on his tail in her signature green scrubs.  

Scott moved out of the way immediately, shock and horror on his face, but Lydia's hand was being crushed by Stiles' desperate fingers as he writhed in agony, and Deaton was forced to work around her.

Melissa leaned over the couch, pushing her hands firmly down on Stiles' shoulders to keep him in place just as he began making gasping and choking noises like the air around them was non-existent. Lydia's eyes built up with petrified tears as she gripped Stiles' hand tighter, though her fingers felt numb.

Deaton, his face utterly calm and concentrated besides the drop of sweat rolling down his temple, leaned over the boy amidst the chaos and plunged a needle into his neck.

Stiles relaxed immediately, all sounds coming from him cut off with a sudden inhale. Deaton removed the needle from him, stepping back slowly. Melissa still kept her hands firm on Stiles, a deep crease between her eyes but the coolness of a nurse keeping her body steady and strong.

Stiles' hand around Lydia's was the last part of him to slacken as his eyes slid shut again and his chest rose high with a calming deep breath. His fingers uncurled from her hand, leaving it prickling as the feeling began to return to the digits.

Lydia released the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding as the room was plunged into a ringing silence.

Melissa removed her hands from Stiles as his head lolled to the side and he fell into a strange half-conscious state.

"What'd you give him?" Scott asked, his breathing slightly strained as if he'd been running.

Turned out that watching your best friend scream his throat raw was just as taxing as slave labor.

"Lichen," Deaton said, swiping a hand across his forehead. "My best guess is that the fox inside of him was interfering with the shift."

"It's still inside him?" Lydia asked, her heart sinking.

Deaton shook his head. "It won't be. The combination of the bite and the lichen should be enough to exorcise it, at which time we'll be prepared to trap it."

"He'll be okay, right?" Melissa asked, placing her hands on her lower back.

"If the bite was going to kill him, it would have done it already. He'll be perfectly fine."

That was all Lydia needed to know before she tuned out the rest of the conversation and brought her gaze back down to Stiles. Her hands, not willing to do anything else but stay close to him, wrapped around his limp hand. She swiped her thumbs in circles on the back of it and had the sudden urge to crawl onto the couch with him, entangle her body with his and keep him close and safe until it was all over. Until he was faster, stronger, more agile than the Stiles they knew.

There was a part of her that would be sad about losing the old Stiles, but she didn't let it get to her. If there was anything she knew about the Stilinskis, it was that they stayed true to themselves. Stiles, who hadn't wanted the bite in the first place, would be stubbornly averse to his new superpowers, she knew. Happy to be alive, annoyed to be alive in the body of something that didn't quite fit right with his rampaging tongue and his expressive, flailing limbs.  

She smiled to herself, watching the peace that had finally settled on his face. For now, at least. For now was good enough.

She ended up sitting on the sofa next to him for the few hours after Deaton had injected the lichen. Her fingers tangled absent mindedly in his thick hair while Scott and the others discussed how they would handle their newborn beta when he woke up. There was an odd feeling bubbling up inside her, swelling her heart and pushing her to feel suddenly airy and bold enough to drag her knuckles down the soft skin of his cheek and place the occasional kiss at the top of his head.

Right then, the calm before the storm that was werewolf-Stiles, Lydia didn't have to think. She did what came naturally to her, because Stiles was alive, and that was all that mattered. She didn't want to have to concern herself with hiding the quirk of her lips that formed as she watched him sleep or suppressing the urge to comfort him as best she could.

As Stiles' eyes flew open suddenly, a warm and bold yellow searching for an Alpha in a room of wary humans, Lydia was forced off the couch to make room for Scott and she couldn't help but notice the small jump of her heart inside her chest at the sight of Stiles awake.

Biting her lip, Lydia decided that she'd figure out whatever that little jump meant later, upon deciding whether or not she would be comfortable dating yet another werewolf.

(She would.)


End file.
